Each month I join Kurt Achin, host of Koreascape on Seoul’s English-language radio station TBS eFM, for an exploration of one of Seoul’s urban spaces. This month, along with Koreascape producer Jamie Lee, we pay a visit to the well-known institution of the Noryangjin fish market — or rather, to both of them. After beginning near downtown Seoul in the early 1920s, Noryangjin moved in the early 1970s into a larger concrete complex just south of the Han River, and there became both a thriving commercial center as well as a popular tourist spot. In more recent years, as the old structure has shown its age, a government body built a shiny new building, albeit a more expensive one, for Noryangjin’s many fish merchants to move into, but not all of them have done so — and not all have wanted to. We ask those who’ve moved why they’ve moved, ask those who’ve stayed why they’ve stayed, and make sure to get one of them to slice up a fish right before our eyes (and for our enjoyable consumption).
Stay tuned for further explorations of Seoul’s architecture, infrastructure, and other parts of the built environment. You can hear our previous segments here.